Posted on 09/19/2005 7:29:37 AM PDT by I8NY
If some of those who died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina have been described as stubborn holdouts who ignored an order to evacuate, then these citizens of New Orleans defy that portrait: The 16 whose bodies were wrapped in white sheets in the chapel of Memorial Medical Center. The 34 whose corpses were abandoned and floating in St. Rita's Nursing Home. The 15 whose bodies were stored in an operating room turned makeshift morgue at Methodist Hospital.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Nursing homes have become a dumping group. Regulation of these homes is lacking. Some states are worse off than others.
I wonder what it takes to start one up in LA?
Welcome to FR.
Can you say Jayson Blair? Their "reporting" is mostly editorializing, and at least sometimes it is plagiarized editorializing.
Everyone, including the NYT, is treating the response to Katrina measured against responses to other disasters...yet this one was so different. Katrina was bigger, so massive that all communication failed and even neighboring states were hit so they couldn't assist each other. The criminal element truly made this worse as rumor and truth got muddled because of their evil actions.
Just an aside, this morning parents in some WA state schools are holding protest meetings trying to keep military recruiters off of HS campuses......even tho the MSM rightfully is telling us about the civilian heroes of Katrina, the fact is, that if we didn't have our military in there rescuing people, thousands upon thousands would have perished.
I live in a city where the largest hospital is located on a river. Every functional part of the hospital, including the generators, is at least 12 feet above the largest recorded high tide.
We have never had a flood, nor have we had a direct hit from a hurricane in recorded history, but we are better prepared than NOLA was , despite their long history of storms and unique vulnerability to flooding.
I have difficulty wrapping my mind around the magnitude of their incompetence. Everyone knew a storm like this would come, and they all closed their eyes and pretended it wouldn't happen on their watch.
...and we held 'da mayor responsible for those heat deaths. Daley had his feet held to the fire for that one, and it never occured to anyone to holler at Clintoon.
THe problems with a couple of the hospitals was that they put their generators in the basements. Under sea level. Unprotected from flooding.
Each hospital has it's own paid staff to handle emergency preparedness. Some on the left think that the President of hte United States should have known that a hospital in a bowl under sea level would put their generator in the basement, and made them fix it.
I'm hopeful that when they fix the hospitals, they will make sure that all critical infrastructure items are above flood level.
If the generators don't get flooded, the hospitals still have power. If the hospitals have storerooms, they have supplies they need. And if thousands of other people don't stubbornly stay home, helicopters can focus on bringing food and supplies to the hospitals where people COULDN'T evacuate, instead of wasting all their time picking people off of roofs who were perfectly capable of walking or driving out of harm's way.
So I'm not "blaming" non-evacuees for their own plight, I guess I'm blaming them for overtaxing the rescue effort and therefore endangering OTHERS.
Well, until they can make hospitals flood-proof (not to mention criminal-proof), those below sea level need to rethink their no-evacuation policy.
Hi.
Florida does seem much better run than Louisiana.
I lived in Louisiana most of my life, half that time in New Orleans. It's a crazy place.
Crime, poverty, illiteracy, corruption, Formosan termites, houses falling down, roaches the size of cigars, just problem after problem.
Glad we moved away. But still, I am emotionally devastated by the things I read. And crushed by the heartlessness so many exhibit.
It kind of reminds you of the 795 people who died in Chicago during a heat wave, that Bill Clinton did nothing to ameliorate, doesn't it?
Somehow, we seem to have reached the point that there is a general expetation that even when Mother Nature throws one of her most powerful punches at us, no one should die as a result. It's a very unrealistic way to think.
Hospitals were keeping critically ill patients as the best option. Moving them out before the storm would have killed many or most. Moving them out after the storm would have done the same. They played the odds and it just didn't work out. They were in a no win situation.
Only 50 years ago, that storm would have killed many thousands people. With technology, (and wealth) we have managed to cut the deaths to a fraction of what they would have been, but we will never be able to reach zero. Nature will have it's say and it will take lives, especially the most fragile lives. I am just impressed that the death toll is as low as it is.
Thanks for your relentless voice of reason on these threads. Poeple prefer to parrot the same thing over and over regardless of the falsity of what they are saying.
Ingrattitude fosters heartlessness.
I don't really know what the people of NOLA are thinking, but when the press started blaming Bush before the winds had died down, my first impulse was [unprintable unprintable].
"Relentless voice of reason" - I like that!
Much nicer than being called a PITA. ;^)
My rule is that if it's in the New York Times, it requires verification from two independent sources before I'll believe it.
There's plenty of blame to go around, including Bush, although he's not the primary culprit. It's a cluster-f@(#.
Bush himself says that he takes responsibility for things that were not done right.
Wait until your own city gets hit with a Category 4-5 hurricane, and see how you feel.
Trent Lott - who's there, on the ground - has some choice words for FEMA, and he's no liberal.
More to your point, can you imagine if such a storm had hit a similar city in a third world country? At least half the citizenry would be dead. As it stands now, it looks like our dead will be an order of magnitude less than first worried. What is lost in all of this is all the heroic effort that went into saving lives, all the GOOD things that happened. I'm afraid that story will be all but lost.
FEMA has never been very fast or effective. All the more reason for state and local government to take responsibility for the first week.
Now, I fully understand that plans can be overtaken by events, and I can certainly have compassion for those who plan well and are foiled by nature, but NOLA had no plans, or, if they had plans, there was a criminal indifference to carrying them out.
I note that the Florida keys have been evacuated. I'm sure there are holdouts, but I doubt if any have involuntarily been left behind.
I bet the then Republican governor, George Ryan got more blame than the Mayor of Chicago, or Clinton for the heat wave.
New Orleans has neighborhoods that the police don't go into even during the daytime.
Had, anyway.
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